the fbi illegally wire-tapped the phones of the south vietnamese ambassador. we couldn't let anybody know that we were illegally listening into the ambassador's phone lines so they couldn't let anybody know what they had heard. so nixon got away with it. and the october surprise. the halloween night surprise that the war was ending right before the election, that october surprise ended up getting undone. anybody who was anti-war in the country had no reason to vote for a democrat. the racist right wing voted peeled off the the vote on the other side. and yes, nixon won. he got by barely. squeaked by on the basis that he was the guy who knew how to end the war, not those dumb democrats. and of course nixon did not know how to end the war. he didn't have a plan. and instead of the war ending on halloween in 1968, the war went on five more years, in which time 15,000 americans were killed as were untold numbers of vietnamese. so that happened. that actually happened, and now in 2013, what are we supposed to do with that information? lbj is dead, nixon is dead, ge